222 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



intoUectual and moral energy, that men owe their mastery over the 

 world. It is mind which has conquered matter. I believe that 

 with the growth of intellectual and moral power in the community, 

 that productive power will increase ; that industry will become more 

 efficient ; that a wiser economy will accumulate wealth ; that new 

 resources of art and nature will be discovered. The inward molds 

 the outward. The power of a people lies in its mind, and this mind 

 if fortified and enlarged, will bring external things into harmony 

 with itself. Antiquity- exalted into divinities the first cultivators of 

 wheat and other useful plants and the first forgers of metals ; and 

 we in these maturer ages of the world have still greater names to 

 boast ir. the records of useful art and agriculture. 



There are many causes which liave operated to produce a pro- 

 gressive reduction of our rural population. False teaching, and the 

 generally prevailing false ideas about the relative merits or advan- 

 tages of the several pursuits of life, and other mischievous influ- 

 ences have induced many to withdraw from agricultural employments 

 and engage in what they suppose to be the more inviting fields of 

 industry. Men possessing the highest type of energy- and enterprise 

 have left the farm because higher compensation is assured them for 

 their services and because the labors of the factor}', the machine 

 shop, the counting room, the office and other positions were presumed 

 to be less onerous, less confining than the duties imposed upon the 

 farmer. While there are discouragements incident to some phases 

 •of the farmers' life, as in all other avocations, and while there are 

 matural controlling reasons why men should not necessarily be 

 • compelled to remain at the old homestead, and perpetually a farmer, 

 yet there has been a recklessly wild, unreasoning and fanatical cr}', 

 •" Go west and get rich." This incessant clamor has generated a 

 feverish, unsettled, adventurous spirit, which has done infinite harm. 

 Time, labor and mone}- have been lost by the premature and too 

 rai)id "withdrawal of the essential elements of prosperity from the 

 >older States where the same labor and capital would have been more 

 economically and piofitably employed. I would not restrict men in 

 -their judgment as to when and where they should make their abiding 

 pflace nor intimate that there should be no emigration or change of 

 em[)loyment. 



Let those who will seek homes in the West. Let them, how- 

 ever, do so considerately so that disaster and privation will not 

 "take the place of happiness and prosperity. Through the grossest 



